Friday, March 23, 2007

But the label is GREEN!

Well, I went to the doctor Wednesday because I've had several issues I've been dealing with, including a little bit of chest pain, my heart fluttering from time to time, and MAJOR pressure in my head, unlike anything I've ever had. You know when you're under a lot of stress, or are angry at the kids, and there's pressure in your head. It was that type of pressure. Almost kind of hard to concentrate on things. Thing is, I am under no stress and I'm far from angry at anyone or anything! I generally live a virtually stress-free life. But yet I've been sort of restless for a week or two, and this pressure has been pretty intense for almost a week.

So I was worried, thinking I had some sort of heart or cardiovascular problem, or blood clot. You know how the mind works. Long story short, the doc told me it could be a sinus infection, and to just let it run its course. If it doesn't go away, get checked out again. He didn't really say anything about the chest pain. Come on doc, you're supposed to FIX me!

Well, no worries. Yesterday I found some relief! And this is where it gets a little embarrassing, although I've been sharing it with everyone I see, so I guess it's more funny (at least to me) than anything.

A brief setup: I'm practically like a fish who lives in coffee, not water. I drink a lot of coffee. But I don't like all the caffeine so I usually mix about 3 scoops of decaf with 1 scoop of caffeinated coffee. So I really don't drink a whole lot of caffeine. I don't drink coffee for the caffeine. It's one of those "acquired tastes," and I would drink decaf exclusively if it had a bolder flavor. Well about a month ago I asked my wife to get me some decaf coffee at Walmart, since I was almost out. She brought home a green tin, and I continued mixing my 3:1 ratio of decaf/caf. About a week ago, I was thinking more about how decaf isn't as "strong" as the real stuff, so I started adding an extra scoop of decaf without adding more water. After doing that I thought, "Wow, this stuff tastes AMAZING! I'm gonna keep doing this! Decaf isn't so bad when you just add an extra scoop!"

So there I was yesterday morning, grabbing my green "decaf" tin and my blue "regular" tin. I looked at the label of the green tin. It said "premium coffee." So at first I thought, "OH, maybe that's why it's been tasting so good; I'll have to keep getting this 'premium' decaffeinated coffee." But then I kept looking, and looking and looking all over the tin for the word "decaffeinated." Huh, they forgot to put the word on the label! NOPE.

You probably figured out where I was going before I got to the punchline. Isn't this pathetic! I don't know which is more pathetic - that a company would sell "regular" coffee in a GREEN tin or that I didn't look at the label to make sure what I was drinking! My wife said that the shelf said "Decaffeinated" right where this stuff was. The store clerk probably thought it was decaf. A GREEN coffee label is SUPPOSED to mean DECAF, right???

So this explains EVERYTHING that I've gone through in the past few weeks, especially the past few days. Not only have I been mixing greenregular coffee with regular regular coffee, but I've been adding an extra scoop! You know, I even thought about going skydiving one day - and now I know why! Just kidding. But man, simple tasks like reading a simple email had been the hardest thing during the past week. I would catch myself with my eyebrows raised and my forehead in its "stressed out" position, and I would think to myself, "What's going on??? I'm under no pressure here, I'm not stressed about anything!" So I would take a deep breath and sit back and relax, but I just couldn't get this pressure out of my head!

Now I know why! And now I know I'm going to check the labels more closely.

3 comments:

Glad you're OK, dude! In retrospect, I guess it's kinda funny (not at the time, I'm sure!). I suppose that's one of the great things about living in this economy of grace... we can give ourselves freedom to fail, not take ourselves too seriously, and have a good laugh at our own expense from time to time.

Here's a funny story... not long after my wife and I began attending GLF, we went to a visitor's dessert. Frank was there to visit with all of us and answer questions about the church. You may have heard this story, he does share it from time to time... but during the whole session, he was holding a cup of water in his hand. We went on for about an hour, then we stood to close in prayer. Frank went to tuck his shirt in... and, forgetting he had the cup of water in his hand, wound up spilling all over himself, so it looked like he peed in his pants! We weren't sure whether to laugh or what (not as 'free' as we are now!)... but he was just beside himself, having a good laugh at what he had done... "Ha ha, look what I did!" I know a lot of pastors (and others) at that point would have probably excused themselves to clean up... but that's just Frank, he had learned long ago to not take himself so seriously.

I do like my coffee as well... you're right, it is an acquired taste... but back in college, when I was frequently staying up late, I 'acquired' it pretty quickly! :)

Funny you should say that... isn't that Frank's 11th commandment: "Thou shalt not take thyself too seriously?" :-D Those words have been running across my mind throughout each day for the last few weeks (unrelated to my coffee incident as far as I can tell), and I've seriously been pondering how my virtually stress-free life is due to living by that commandment. I know there's no law that could ever give life, but that one comes close. ;)

I laughed so hard when I Read this. I had something similar happen to me.

I accidentally used too much coffee for a few days and I felt totally wired. My head felt like it literally had static in it lol. It's really bad. I was fidgety and couldn't concentrate. This was only a few weeks ago.